We arrived 22 hours ago, so forgive me if this post is not entirely well written. All fine with the trip, and no problems with passport control or customs either.
Looking forward to seeing friends here in Astana, but missing family and friends in Britain already. Hey ho. Hope to visit Britain again sometime this year.
Will try and publish posts on our time in Britain (and my previous Amsterdam/UK trip from back in last September and October) soon.

I recently read in an Amsterdam forum how some members bought discounted coffee machines, and then used own-brand refills to make the overall cost of a cuppa less. One of them handed out a coupon code that gave you a free machine, a Saeco one I believe. In much the same way as some inkjet printers are actually sold at less than cost by the manufacturer, the companies rely on the ‘refill’ cost to recover their investments.

Blog income this year - once I have earned another $1.40, this blog will have paid for the following items this year

Return plane tickets to Amsterdam and Britain, back in September
3 way split on the rent for an apartment in Amsterdam
Spending money for the three week holiday in Amsterdam and Britain
Irina’s new phone (well most of it )
A few meals out during the last 7 months
Most of the cost for the plane tickets Ira and I bought for our trip to Britain this Xmas
Irina’s Xmas pressie (a lovely little laptop. Am I stupid, or just assuming she doesn’t read this blog? Neither, I know she reads the blog, but she helped me to narrow down the selection. This will be a laptop for her to browse the internet whilst I’m hogging the current PC, and to do some office-type work on. Therefore, my normal criteria of how well it plays games and whether it has enough LEDs/transparent casing should not apply to her laptop (I’m also hereby giving Ira written consent to whack me around the head (with something soft) should I start treating it as anything other than her PC…))

Anyway, despite Google’s decision to penalize myself and many other bloggers by wiping out their PageRank (I was expecting a rise to 5, from 4, instead of dropping to 0 with 3 drops in a month), I hope that this blog will help assist this household for the next few years, though I am obviously hoping to diversify the income sources as well.

I still have problems accessing my CPanel interface if I don’t use the HTTPS address to connect, but as there is no disadvantage to this method, only increased security, I’m not overly concerned. Anyway, I was looking through some of the info provided by AWStats, and noticed that regular readers (at least those with a fixed/semi-permanent IP address) are increasing for this blog. Thank you to whoever you are. I also noticed that the raw number of unique visits has been getting healthier over the last few months, despite a break in posts whilst I was in Amsterdam and Britain.

The search terms people are using when they find my site also interests me, see below for an example of them. Free bed plans and Kazakhstan are regularly in the top 5, however I never would have thought that Hetty Wainthropp would be a source of traffic! I have checked through the top 50 (Google) results for that search phrase, and I’m nowhere to be seen, so someone, somewhere is really quite interested in the TV series…

kazakhstan, chris merriman, computers internet blog, free bed plans, triclear, tewksbury flood 2007, hetty wainthropp

Anyway, feel free to laugh at the visitor numbers, gawk at the search terms, or simply ignore this post. On the other hand, if other stats are of interest, such as the countries most visitors come from, or the OS/Browser break down, feel free to contact me.

I am skipping ahead a little here, as I still need to write the posts on Amsterdam before moving on to Britain, but want to post a link to this article over at the BBC news site.
I had noticed safe refuge areas when I was travelling to Swansea (actually it was probably going to Birmingham airport) earlier this month, and did wonder what had sparked their need. By the looks of it, during times of peak traffic, the hard shoulder will be used as an extra (normally 4th) lane for those motorists who needs to take the exit at the next junction. From a purely selfish point of view, this seems like a good idea. Less traffic, people getting to work/home quicker. However, I have had several incidents in the past where I would not have been able to make it to such safe refuges with my car. Whether a complete tyre blow out, or engines cutting out, there are a few reasons why your car may not be able to make it to the next fenced off area. Although the article does explain that cameras will be monitored to ensure that any blockages by broken down vehicles will trigger the hard shoulder to be revert to its original intended use, I can’t help wonder how many accidents may occur before this change is implemented.
To my non-UK readers, if you get a moment, do let me know if your country has similar schemes already in place, and what you think of them.

This is the second and last post regarding my journey through Kaliningrad ‘International’ Airport. I made notes up until this point during the holiday, for some reason things get a little hazy during my time in Amsterdam….

The big screen I mentioned in a previous post was now visible to us. Wow, it was high quality, had flight numbers, destinations, and even the weather at each destination! Unfortunately it lacked any sort of column for flight times or estimates of delays involved. (Can you tell where this story is heading yet, dear reader?). I was not too worried, as there were only six or seven departure exits from the area, and you could even find a seat in the smoking section that gave a view of all but one of these When it got to 10 minutes past the approximate boarding time for my next flight, I was a little concerned, but had seen no one leave for any flights at all. There were a few announcements, in Russian, but these seemed to be more procedural statements (don’t leave luggage unattended etc.) than flight info, so I asked the Germans if they had flown through here before (only to discover two spoke English), and if so did they know what happened when flights were delayed? A friendly shrug informed me they were currently as clueless as me.
I then decided to tour the perimeter of the area, determined to find someone who spoke English, or at least would be prepared to listen to my attempts at enquiries in Russian. (Don’t laugh too hard, several times officials (not just in Kaliningrad) who realised my Russian skills were not sufficient to conclude any conversation quickly had walked off, with no clue as to my next suitable avenue of enquiry.) I quickly found a friendly lady who pointed me in the direction of a young girl who worked there and spoke better English than my Russian. I was informed that there was nothing to worry about, that a flight from Moscow had been delayed by two hours, and that three passengers hoping to get to Amsterdam were on that same flight. And no, neither announcements nor TV screens had yet revealed this info. (Again, I mainly wanted to know so that my next time in the airport would not involve so much mystery). There were a couple of things I had not fully understood, and when Ira called me up, to check I was about to get on the plane, and hadn’t fallen asleep somewhere silly, I was about to ask her to double check them with someone at the airport, if I handed my mobile over. However, Irina had been told by the airport a few moments earlier that my flight to Amsterdam WAS on time, and that all passengers were boarding this very second. Obviously this left Irina concerned that I had mightily goofed, and was about to miss a flight involving the Netherlands once again. Eventually the lady who I had previously spoken to proved to be correct, and the person who had spoken to Ira was full of crap. I had already called Alex and Chris, to confirm that they had left Cheltenham and were on their way to Birmingham airport (more on that later). Unfortunately I found I was not able to make calls to Kazakhstan at all, though calls to Britain had obviously worked. Two hours after our planned departure, our plane left Kaliningrad, and I was most glad of the 1.5 hours of sleep I grabbed on the flight.
Schiphol, Amsterdam itself and UK trip info to follow in other posts soon.

So, following on from the previous Amsterdam post, onto the trip itself…
I left for Astana airport around 6am on the 21st September, feeling happy that I would be meeting up with two friends very soon, going back to a city I enjoy for many reasons, but also sad as I would be apart from Irina for the longest amount of time since we first met! The first section of the journey went well, with no problems from Kazakhstan’s sometimes over-eager airport officials. One small hitch was my inability to make outgoing voice calls once I had got to the departure gate - this had happened before though, so I didn’t worry too much, and just texted Ira asking her to call me, so I could confirm all was OK thus far. Having only had 2.5 hours sleep, I was a little tired, but there was no chance I would drop off before I got on the plane.
Once I arrived in Kaliningrad, (where Alex flew through on her recent trip to see us), the whole plane had to go in reverse through the normal procedures for leaving the airport. We left the plane and entered the terminal through a departure exit. There appeared to be three cleaners operating an x-ray machine, which looked a little odd, and some of the people in the queue ahead of me were already loudly grumbling (in Russian and Kazakh) about something or other. It turns out the cleaners security staff were not allowing any bottles of liquid larger than 100ml INTO the building. Had this been on the way out, with us ALL heading to a European country, I could understand the confiscation of large bottles of liquids. However, this was to get into the building, and the staff appeared to be concentrating on alcohol, much of which had been purchased by my fellow passengers in Astana’s duty free shop. Suffice to say separating a Russian or Kazakh from their spirits is never the easiest of tasks, however the x-rayers ploughed on, dumping all the bottles into a washing up bowl or three on the floor.
When it came to my turn, a stout lady loudly informed me there were several problems with my hand luggage, at least their x-ray machine told them. I decided to play it even dumber than in reality, and pronounced very slowly (& even more incorrectly than normal), that I could not speak Russian. She attempted to say the same thing again louder, to which I smiled, and started pulling random things from my bag. She gave up and put the bag through the x-ray machine again, and started squawking about a problem again. I decided that as I had no liquids in there, other than a nearly empty spray deodorant that I did not pose too great a security risk. After several more ‘helpful’ suggestions from myself (pulling out my books one by one, followed by the spare set of clothing, each time offering them to her), she eyed the queue behind me, and pointed me away from the security station. I gladly obliged, and took the opportunity to grab a cigarette by a bin that several other people had congregated around. There was a no smoking sign, but as everyone else was taking the opportunity for a nicotine fix where there were no cameras, and the staff were too busy to give a damn, I joined in. During the course of what I thought might be my last cigarette until I had cleared passport control in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, I observed the passengers who had had their booze nicked (various conspiracy rumours had already been started, mainly revolving around the possibility that the cleaners/security staff were having a party that evening and wanted to save their budget for other items) wait until the staff were busy arguing with the next incensed passenger, and then calmly walk up to the confiscated goods, and retrieve their own bottles. Most managed to get away in time, a few were stopped, shouted at, and a few just stood and argued until the staff gave up.
Anyway we proceeded up the stairs, into a departure lounge where we showed our tickets (for the flight we had just been on!) and passports, and waited for the plane full of passengers (minus those who actually finished their journey in Kaliningrad and so left the airport immediately) to get past the initial security checks downstairs. At this point we could see the main airport area, with its large screen with flight info on, a smoking area (ooops, I now know for the future), and a few shops. Those who wanted to buy a coffee (or even a duty free bottle of alcohol!) were allowed out of the departure (masquerading as an arrival) lounge, as long as they left their passport with the security staff present in this room. Around 30 minutes later we were all together again, and I had noted a few foreigners speaking German (it is good to know who to turn to if you really need some assistance with officials whose language you are not completely au fait with). We then presented tickets for our next flights to someone sat at a computer terminal. As this was a departure lounge, and we were arriving, the room layout meant we all had to file past her whilst looking at the screen ourselves, with the lady needing to swivel round her chair away from her computer to face us each time she needed some info. Having got past this stage, there was a three person posse waiting at the exit/entrance to the departure terminal (we were almost at the point of syncing our direction with the rest of the inhabitants of this airport by this point.) These new people each took a turn to check each person’s passports, old and new plane tickets and then allowed us in….
More to follow soon

I am going to start typing up my experiences during my trip to Amsterdam and Britain, before I forget them.
In case you happen to be a new reader, I’ll give a quick background to the trip…
I was born in Britain, and spent my first 27 years there. I met Irina back in 1998, and got to know a little bit about her home country (Kazakhstan) from talking to her. August 2001 saw us get married here in Astana, and we spent the next 5 or so years living in Britain, coming over here in the summer or winter each year. Eventually we decided to try living in Astana for a while, which gave Irina the chance to be closer with her family and friends for a while, and for me to discover her home nation, and see how life is for people in Kazakhstan now. Anyway, to skip back to the wedding a moment, Irina flew over to Kazakhstan a little before me, to start the paper work required for the marriage to take place.
As you may imagine, I partied quite hard in the last week or so before I was due to leave, to the point that a friend had to pack my luggage for me an hour or so before the coach was due to take me to the airport. My flight went via Amsterdam, so I had decided to take the opportunity to actually visit the city itself. We’ll skip most of the gory details, but suffice to say I missed a couple of flights, and spent too much time too ‘tired’ wandering around the city (I was just 22 at the time, as opposed to the responsible, mature and well behaved 28 year old who now types this post out ). A few years after we were married, Ira secretly arranged a long weekend in Amsterdam for us, so I already knew it was theoretically possible to not get lost, miss flights, and actually have a bed to sleep in!
This year ChrisD was meant to come and visit us here in Astana again, and the plan was that I’d follow him back and visit Amsterdam with him. However circumstances dictated that he couldn’t come this year, so I decided to meet him over in Holland, unfortunately Irina could not get the time off work. As I was travelling all the way to Western Europe, I decided I would check how much more it would cost me to visit Britain, and see my family and friends. As it turned out, if I used different airlines and booking agents, I could spend less than $150 and spend some time in the UK A bit later on, AlexC decided she would like to tag along as well, as the apartment we had booked could hold four, and they had both met previously, we decided to make it a threesome. NOT that sort of threesome… Anyway, I’ll leave the rest for now, I just wanted to make sure that everyone would be at the same level of background knowledge before posting any pictures and stories.

I have a confession to make… Due to my ignorance of luggage, the suitcase I used when I travelled to Amsterdam and Britain has a broken part. When I had to move the suitcase (which was open at the time), I used the handles at either end to pick it up. Unfortunately, one of these turned out NOT to be a handle! Had it been a Samsonite product, I suspect it would have survived my mis-handling, however it wasn’t, so it didn’t. It turns out the handle on the bottom of the case was in fact a little steadying leg for when you have the case expanded, and need to stand it on it’s end, without falling over. I’ll wait and see if Irina reads this post, if not, I guess I’ll need to own up to this misdemeanour in person

I hope to write a few posts on my stay in Britain later, but for now I have a few things to sort out here at home.
A quick summary of some of the posts to come…
Kaliningrad Airport - Almost there in terms of earning its ‘international’ status
Amsterdam - How not to miss flights (learnt my lesson 6 years ago)
Cheltenham & Evesham - Dad and friends
Clydach - Mum, John and friends
Falmouth - Nick, his birthday, Roz, and the trip down in the motor home
Amsterdam - 4 hour stop over in the city itself
Anyway, hopefully more details to come soon